“Great Scott! it’s a tidal wave!” gasped Jack. “And I do not own a pair of rubber boots!”
“There’s rubber enough in your neck to make several pairs,” said Bingham.
“Look at the great trusts that are forming to squeeze the people!” the oratorical youth pursued, pointing tragically with one quivering finger. “Behold them in all their brutal insolence and contempt for the poor wretches they are bleeding! Tell me of one man connected with a trust who ever did a truly great, unselfish, and generous thing.”
“Carnegie,” said Frank.
“Bah!” exploded Greg. “Who knows the hidden meaning behind his seeming acts of munificence? Perhaps it is a blind to deceive the restless common people and lull their suspicions so that the great trust may continue to squeeze them still more. Besides, it is bread the masses are crying for, and he gives them a stone in the shape of a book.”
“Men do not live by bread alone,” reminded Frank.
“But it is bread the great masses must have,” asserted Carker. “What time has the slave of day toil for reading? When he is not working, he must be sleeping.”
“Or drinking beer,” murmured Ready. “If he had sense enough to keep away from the saloons and save his money, he might not be such a downtrodden wretch.”
At this Frank nodded. He knew there was more or less truth in what Carker was saying in such a theatrical manner; and, at the same time, he was aware that Ready had struck the key of the cause for more than half the poverty and wretchedness of the poor.
“What we need——” Carker tried to go on.